Project Apollo: A Retrospective Analysis

Introduction

On 25 May 1961 President John F. Kennedy announced to the nation
a goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end
of the decade. This decision involved much study and review prior
to making it public, and tremendous expenditure and effort to
make it a reality by 1969. Only the building of the Panama Canal
rivaled the Apollo program's size as the largest non- military
technological endeavor ever undertaken by the United States; only
the Manhattan Project was comparable in a wartime setting. The
human spaceflight imperative was a direct outgrowth of it; Projects
Mercury (at least in its latter stages), Gemini, and Apollo were
each designed to execute it. It was finally successfully accomplished
on 20 July 1969, when Apollo 11's astronaut Neil Armstrong left
the Lunar Module and set foot on the surface of the Moon.

The Kennedy Perspective on Space

In 1960 John F. Kennedy, a Senator from Massachusetts between
1953 and 1960, ran for president as the Democratic candidate,
with party wheelhorse Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate. Using
the slogan, "Let's get this country moving again," Kennedy
charged the Republican Eisenhower Administration with doing nothing
about the myriad social, economic, and international problems
that festered in the 1950s. He was especially hard on Eisenhower's
record in international relations, taking a Cold Warrior position
on a supposed "missile gap" (which turned out not to
be the case) wherein the United States lagged far behind the Soviet
Union in ICBM technology. He also invoked the Cold War rhetoric
opposing a communist effort to take over the world and used as
his evidence the 1959 revolution in Cuba that brought leftist
dictator Fidel Castro to power. The Republican candidate, Richard
M. Nixon, who had been Eisenhower's Vice President tried to defend
his mentor's record but when the results were in Kennedy was elected
by a narrow margin of 118,550 out of more than 68 million popular
votes cast.1

Kennedy as president had little direct interest in the U.S. space
program. He was not a visionary enraptured with the romantic image
of the last American frontier in space and consumed by the adventure
of exploring the unknown. He was, on the other hand, a
Cold Warrior with a keen sense of Realpolitik in foreign
affairs, and worked hard to maintain balance of power and spheres
of influence in American/Soviet relations. The Soviet Union's
non-military accomplishments in space, therefore, forced Kennedy
to respond and to serve notice that the U.S. was every bit as
capable in the space arena as the Soviets. Of course, to prove
this fact, Kennedy had to be willing to commit national resources
to NASA and the civil space program. The Cold War realities of
the time, therefore, served as the primary vehicle for an expansion
of NASA's activities and for the definition of Project Apollo
as the premier civil space effort of the nation. Even more significant,
from Kennedy's perspective the Cold War necessitated the expansion
of the military space program, especially the development of ICBMs
and satellite reconnaissance systems.2

While Kennedy was preparing to take office, he appointed an ad
hoc committee headed by Jerome B. Wiesner of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology to offer suggestions for American efforts
in space. Wiesner, who later headed the President's Science Advisory
Committee (PSAC) under Kennedy, concluded that the issue of "national
prestige" was too great to allow the Soviet Union leadership
in space efforts, and therefore the U.S. had to enter the field
in a substantive way. "Space exploration and exploits,"
he wrote in a 12 January 1961 report to the president-elect, "have
captured the imagination of the peoples of the world. During the
next few years the prestige of the United States will in part
be determined by the leadership we demonstrate in space activities."
Wiesner also emphasized the importance of practical non-military
applications of space technology--communications, mapping, and
weather satellites among others--and the necessity of keeping
up the effort to exploit space for national security through such
technologies as ICBMs and reconnaissance satellites. He tended
to deemphasize the human spaceflight initiative for very practical
reasons. American launch vehicle technology, he argued, was not
well developed and the potential of placing an astronaut in space
before the Soviets was slim. He thought human spaceflight was
a high-risk enterprise with a low-chance of success. Human spaceflight
was also less likely to yield valuable scientific results than,
and the U.S., Wiesner thought, should play to its strength in
space science where important results had already been achieved.3

Kennedy only accepted part of what Wiesner recommended. He was
committed to conducting a more vigorous space program than had
been Eisenhower, but he was more interested in human spaceflight
than either his predecessor or his science advisor. This was partly
because of the drama surrounding Project Mercury and the seven
astronauts that NASA was training.4 Wiesner
had cautioned Kennedy about the hyperbole associated with human
spaceflight. "Indeed, by having placed the highest national
priority on the MERCURY program we have strengthened the popular
belief that man in space is the most important aim for our non-military
space effort," Wiesner wrote. "The manner in which this
program has been publicized in our press has further crystallized
such belief."5 Kennedy, nevertheless,
recognized the tremendous public support arising from this program
and wanted to ensure that it reflected favorably upon his administration.

But it was a risky enterprise--what if the Soviets were first
to send a human into space? what if an astronaut was killed and
Mercury was a failure?--and the political animal in Kennedy wanted
to minimize those risks. The earliest Kennedy pronouncements relative
to civil space activity directly addressed these hazards. He offered
to cooperate with the Soviet Union, still the only other nation
involved in launching satellites, in the exploration of space.
In his inaugural address in January 1961 Kennedy spoke directly
to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and asked him to cooperate
in exploring "the stars."6 In his
State of the Union address ten days later, he asked the Soviet
Union "to join us in developing a weather prediction program,
in a new communications satellite program, and in preparation
for probing the distant planets of Mars and Venus, probes which
may someday unlock the deepest secrets of the Universe."
Kennedy also publicly called for the peaceful use of space, and
the limitation of war in that new environment.7

In making these overtures Kennedy accomplished several important
political ends. First, he appeared to the world as the statesman
by seeking friendly cooperation rather than destructive competition
with the Soviet Union, knowing full well that there was little
likelihood that Khrushchev would accept his offer. Conversely,
the Soviets would appear to be monopolizing space for their own
personal, and presumably military, benefit. Second, he minimized
the goodwill that the Soviet Union enjoyed because of its own
success in space vis- -vis the U.S. Finally, if the
Soviet Union accepted his call for cooperation, it would tacitly
be recognizing the equality of the U.S. in space activities, something
that would also look very good on the world stage.8

The Soviet Challenge Renewed

Had the balance of power and prestige between the United States
and the Soviet Union remained stable in the spring of 1961, it
is quite possible that Kennedy would never have advanced his Moon
program and the direction of American space efforts might have
taken a radically different course. Kennedy seemed quite happy
to allow NASA to execute Project Mercury at a deliberate pace,
working toward the orbiting of an astronaut sometime in the middle
of the decade, and to build on the satellite programs that were
yielding excellent results both in terms of scientific knowledge
and practical application. Jerome Wiesner reflected: "If
Kennedy could have opted out of a big space program without hurting
the country in his judgment, he would have."9

Firm evidence for Kennedy's essential unwillingness to commit
to an aggressive space program came in March 1961 when the NASA
Administrator, James E. Webb, submitted a request that greatly
expanded his agency's fiscal year 1962 budget so as to permit
a Moon landing before the end of the decade. While the Apollo
lunar landing program had existed as a longterm goal of NASA during
the Eisenhower administration, Webb proposed greatly expanding
and accelerating it. Kennedy's budget director, David E. Bell,
objected to this large increase and debated Webb on the merits
of an accelerated lunar landing program. In the end the president
was unwilling to obligate the nation to a much bigger and more
costly space program. Instead, in good political fashion, he approved
a modest increase in the NASA budget to allow for development
of the big launch vehicles that would eventually be required to
support a Moon landing.10

A slow and deliberate pace might have remained the standard for
the U.S. civil space effort had not two important events happened
that forced Kennedy to act. The Soviet Union's space effort counted
coup on the United States one more time not long after the new
president took office. On 12 April 1961 Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin became the first human in space with a one- orbit mission
aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1. The chance to place a human
in space before the Soviets did so had now been lost. The great
success of that feat made the gregarious Gagarin a global hero,
and he was an effective spokesman for the Soviet Union until his
death in 1967 from an unfortunate aircraft accident. It was only
a salve on an open wound, therefore, when Alan Shepard became
the first American in space during a 15-minute suborbital flight
on 5 May 1961 by riding a Redstone booster in his Freedom 7
Mercury spacecraft.11

Comparisons between the Soviet and American flights were inevitable
afterwards. Gagarin had flown around the Earth; Shepard had been
the cannonball shot from a gun. Gagarin's Vostok spacecraft had
weighed 10,428 pounds; Freedom 7 weighed 2,100 pounds.
Gagarin had been weightless for 89 minutes; Shepard for only 5
minutes. "Even though the United States is still the strongest
military power and leads in many aspects of the space race,"
wrote journalist Hanson Baldwin in the New York Times not
long after Gagarin's flight, "the world--impressed by the
spectacular Soviet firsts--believes we lag militarily and technologically."12
By any unit of measure the U.S. had not demonstrated technical
equality with the Soviet Union, and that fact worried national
leaders because of what it would mean in the larger Cold War environment.
These apparent disparities in technical competence had to be addressed,
and Kennedy had to find a way to reestablish the nation's credibility
as a technological leader before the world.

Close in the wake of the Gagarin achievement, the Kennedy Administration
suffered another devastating blow in the Cold War that contributed
to the sense that action had to be taken. Between 15 and 19 April
1961 the administration supported the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion
of Cuba designed to overthrow Castro. Executed by anti-Castro
Cuban refugees armed and trained by the CIA, the invasion was
a debacle almost from the beginning. It was predicated on an assumption
that the Cuban people would rise up to welcome the invaders and
when that proved to be false, the attack could not succeed. American
backing of the invasion was a great embarrassment both to Kennedy
personally and to his administration. It damaged U.S. relations
with foreign nations enormously, and made the communist world
look all the more invincible.13

While the Bay of Pigs invasion was never mentioned explicitly
as a reason for stepping up U.S. efforts in space, the international
situation certainly played a role as Kennedy scrambled to recover
a measure of national dignity. Wiesner reflected, "I don't
think anyone can measure it, but I'm sure it [the invasion] had
an impact. I think the President felt some pressure to get something
else in the foreground."14 T. Keith
Glennan, NASA Administrator under Eisenhower, immediately linked
the invasion and the Gagarin flight together as the seminal events
leading to Kennedy's announcement of the Apollo decision. He confided
in his diary that "In the aftermath of that [Bay of Pigs]
fiasco, and because of the successful orbiting of astronauts by
the Soviet Union, it is my opinion that Mr. Kennedy asked for
a reevaluation of the nation's space program."15

Reevaluating NASA's Priorities

Two days after the Gagarin flight on 12 April, Kennedy discussed
once again the possibility of a lunar landing program with Webb,
but the NASA head's conservative estimates of a cost of more than
$20 billion for the project was too steep and Kennedy delayed
making a decision. A week later, at the time of the Bay of Pigs
invasion, Kennedy called Johnson, who headed the National Aeronautics
and Space Council, to the White House to discuss strategy for
catching up with the Soviets in space. Johnson agreed to take
the matter up with the Space Council and to recommend a course
of action. It is likely that one of the explicit programs that
Kennedy asked Johnson to consider was a lunar landing program,
for the next day, 20 April 1961, he followed up with a memorandum
to Johnson raising fundamental questions about the project. In
particular, Kennedy asked

Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a
laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket
to go to the moon and back with a man? Is there any other space
program that promises dramatic results in which we could win?16

While he waited for the results of Johnson's investigation, this
memo made it clear that Kennedy had a pretty good idea of what
he wanted to do in space. He confided in a press conference on
21 April that he was leaning toward committing the nation to a
large- scale project to land Americans on the Moon. "If we
can get to the moon before the Russians, then we should,"
he said, adding that he had asked his vice president to review
options for the space program.17 This was
the first and last time that Kennedy said anything in public about
a lunar landing program until he officially unveiled the plan.
It is also clear that Kennedy approached the lunar landing effort
essentially as a response to the competition between the U.S.
and the U.S.S.R. For Kennedy the Moon landing program, conducted
in the tense Cold War environment of the early 1960s, was a strategic
decision directed toward advancing the far-flung interests of
the United States in the international arena. It aimed toward
recapturing the prestige that the nation had lost as a result
of Soviet successes and U.S. failures. It was, as political scientist
John M. Logsdon has suggested, "one of the last major political
acts of the Cold War. The Moon Project was chosen to symbolize
U.S. strength in the head-to-head global competition with the
Soviet Union."18

Lyndon Johnson probably understood these circumstances very well,
and for the next two weeks his Space Council diligently considered,
among other possibilities, a lunar landing before the Soviets.
As early as 22 April, NASA's Deputy Administrator Hugh L. Dryden
had responded to a request for information from the National Aeronautics
and Space Council about a Moon program by writing that there was
"a chance for the U.S. to be the first to land a man on the
moon and return him to earth if a determined national effort is
made." He added that the earliest this feat could be accomplished
was 1967, but that to do so would cost about $33 billion dollars,
a figure $10 billion more than the whole projected NASA budget
for the next ten years.19 A week later Wernher
von Braun, director of NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight
Center at Huntsville, Alabama, and head of the big booster program
needed for the lunar effort, responded to a similar request for
information from Johnson. He told the vice president that "we
have a sporting chance of sending a 3-man crew around the moon
ahead of the Soviets" and "an excellent chance of beating
the Soviets to the first landing of a crew on the moon
(including return capability, of course.)" He added that
"with an all-out crash program" the U.S. could achieve
a landing by 1967 or 1968.20

After gaining these technical opinions, Johnson began to poll
political leaders for their sense of the propriety of committing
the nation to an accelerated space program with Project Apollo
as its centerpiece. He brought in Senators Robert Kerr (D-OK)
and Styles Bridges (R-NH) and spoke with several Representatives
to ascertain if they were willing to support an accelerated space
program. While only a few were hesitant, Robert Kerr worked to
allay their concerns. He called on James Webb, who had worked
for his business conglomerate during the 1950s, to give him a
straight answer about the project's feasibility. Kerr told his
congressional colleagues that Webb was enthusiastic about the
program and "that if Jim Webb says we can a land a man on
the moon and bring him safely home, then it can be done."
This endorsement secured considerable political support for the
lunar project. Johnson also met with several businessmen and representatives
from the aerospace industry and other government agencies to ascertain
the consensus of support for a new space initiative. Most of them
also expressed support.21

Air Force General Bernard A. Schriever, commander of the Air Force
Systems Command that developed new technologies, expressed the
sentiment of many people by suggesting that an accelerated lunar
landing effort "would put a focus on our space program."
He believed it was important for the U.S. to build international
prestige and that the return was more than worth the price to
be paid.22 Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
a member of the Space Council, was also a supporter of the initiative
because of the Soviet Union's image in the world. He wrote to
the Senate Space Committee a little later that "We must respond
to their conditions; otherwise we risk a basic misunderstanding
on the part of the uncommitted countries, the Soviet Union, and
possibly our allies concerning the direction in which power is
moving and where long-term advantage lies."23
It was clear early in these deliberations that Johnson was in
favor of an expanded space program in general and a maximum effort
to land an astronaut on the Moon. Whenever he heard reservations
Johnson used his forceful personality to persuade. "Now,"
he asked, "would you rather have us be a second-rate nation
or should we spend a little money?"24

In an interim report to the president on 28 April 1961, Johnson
concluded that "The U.S. can, if it will, firm up its objectives
and employ its resources with a reasonable chance of attaining
world leadership in space during this decade," and recommended
committing the nation to a lunar landing.25
In this exercise Johnson had built, as Kennedy had wanted, a strong
justification for undertaking Project Apollo but he had also moved
on to develop a greater consensus for the objective among key
government and business leaders.

The NASA Position

While NASA's leaders were generally pleased with the course Johnson
was recommending--they recognized and mostly agreed with the political
reasons for adopting a determined lunar landing program--they
wanted to shape it as much as possible to the agency's particular
priorities. NASA Administrator James Webb, well known as a skilled
political operator who could seize an opportunity, organized a
short-term effort to accelerate and expand a long-range NASA master
plan for space exploration. A fundamental part of this effort
addressed a legitimate concern that the scientific and technological
advancements for which NASA had been created not be eclipsed by
the political necessities of international rivalries. Webb conveyed
the concern of the agency's technical and scientific community
to Jerome Wiesner on 2 May 1961, noting that "the most careful
consideration must be given to the scientific and technological
components of the total program and how to present the picture
to the world and to our own nation of a program that has real
value and validity and from which solid additions to knowledge
can be made, even if every one of the specific so-called 'spectacular'
flights or events are done after they have been accomplished by
the Russians." He asked that Wiesner help him "make
sure that this component of solid, and yet imaginative, total
scientific and technological value is built in."26

Partly in response to this concern, Johnson asked NASA to provide
for him a set of specific recommendations on how a scientifically-viable
Project Apollo, would be accomplished by the end of the decade.
What emerged was a comprehensive space policy planning document
that had the lunar landing as its centerpiece but that attached
several ancillary funding items to enhance the program's scientific
value and advance space exploration on a broad front:

1. Spacecraft and boosters for the human flight to the Moon.

2. Scientific satellite probes to survey the Moon.

3. A nuclear rocket.

4. Satellites for global communications.

5. Satellites for weather observation.

6. Scientific projects for Apollo landings.

Johnson accepted these recommendations and passed them to Kennedy
who approved the overall plan.27

The last major area of concern was the timing for the Moon landing.
The original NASA estimates had given a target date of 1967, but
as the project became more crystallized agency leaders recommended
not committing to such a strict deadline.28
James Webb, realizing the problems associated with meeting target
dates based on NASA's experience in space flight, suggested that
the president commit to a landing by the end of the decade, giving
the agency another two years to solve any problems that might
arise. The White House accepted this proposal.29

Decision

President Kennedy unveiled the commitment to execute Project Apollo
on 25 May 1961 in a speech on "Urgent National Needs,"
billed as a second State of the Union message. He told Congress
that the U.S. faced extraordinary challenges and needed to respond
extraordinarily. In announcing the lunar landing commitment he
said:

If we are to win the battle that is going on around the
world between freedom and tyranny, if we are to win the battle
for men's minds, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred
in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik
in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere
who are attempting to make a determination of which road they
should take. . . . We go into space because whatever mankind must
undertake, free men must fully share.

Then he added: "I believe this Nation should commitment itself
to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a
man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space
project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or
more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none
will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."30

An Assessment of the Decision

The President had correctly gauged the mood of the nation. His
commitment captured the American imagination and was met with
overwhelming support. No one seemed concerned either about the
difficulty or about the expense at the time. Congressional debate
was perfunctory and NASA found itself literally pressing to expend
the funds committed to it during the early 1960s. Like most political
decisions, at least in the U.S. experience, the decision to carry
out Project Apollo was an effort to deal with an unsatisfactory
situation (world perception of Soviet leadership in space and
technology). As such Apollo was a remedial action ministering
to a variety of political and emotional needs floating in the
ether of world opinion. Apollo addressed these problems very well,
and was a worthwhile action if measured only in those terms. In
announcing Project Apollo Kennedy put the world on notice that
the U.S. would not take a back seat to its superpower rival. John
Logsdon commented: "By entering the race with such a visible
and dramatic commitment, the United States effectively undercut
Soviet space spectaculars without doing much except announcing
its intention to join the contest."31
It was an effective symbol, just as Kennedy had intended.

It also gave the U.S. an opportunity to shine. The lunar landing
was so far beyond the capabilities of either the United States
or the Soviet Union in 1961 that the early lead in space activities
taken by the Soviets would not predetermine the outcome. It gave
the U.S. a reasonable chance of overtaking the Soviet Union in
space activities and recovering a measure of lost status.

Even though Kennedy's political objectives were essentially achieved
with the decision to go to the Moon, there were other aspects
of the Apollo commitment that require assessment. Those who wanted
to see a vigorous space program, a group led by NASA scientists
and engineers, obtained their wish with Kennedy's announcement.
An opening was present to this group in 1961 that had not existed
at any time during the Eisenhower Administration, and they made
the most of it. They inserted into the overall package supporting
Apollo additional programs that they believed would greatly strengthen
the scientific and technological return on the investment to go
to the Moon. In addition to seeking international prestige, this
group proposed an accelerated and integrated national space effort
incorporating both scientific and commercial components.

In the end a unique confluence of political necessity, personal
commitment and activism, scientific and technological ability,
economic prosperity, and public mood made possible the 1961 decision
to carry out a forward-looking lunar landing program. What perhaps
should be suggested is that a complex web or system of ties between
various people, institutions, and interests allowed the Apollo
decision.32 It then fell to NASA and other
organizations of the Federal Government to accomplish the task
set out in a few short paragraphs by President Kennedy.

Gearing Up for Project Apollo

The first challenge NASA leaders faced in meeting the presidential
mandate was securing funding. While Congress enthusiastically
appropriated funding for Apollo immediately after the president's
announcement, NASA Administrator James E. Webb was rightly concerned
that the momentary sense of crisis would subside and that the
political consensus present for Apollo in 1961 would abate. He
tried, albeit without much success, to lock the presidency and
the Congress into a long-term obligation to support the program.
While they had made an intellectual commitment, NASA's leadership
was concerned that they might renege on the economic part of the
bargain at some future date.33

Initial NASA estimates of the costs of Project Apollo were about
$20 billion through the end of the decade, a figure approaching
$150 billion in 1992 dollars when accounting for inflation. Webb
quickly stretched those initial estimates for Apollo as far as
possible, with the intent that even if NASA did not receive its
full budget requests, as it did not during the latter half of
the decade, it would still be able to complete Apollo. At one
point in 1963, for instance, Webb came forward with a NASA funding
projection through 1970 for more than $35 billion. As it turned
out Webb was able to sustain the momentum of Apollo through the
decade, largely because of his rapport with key members of Congress
and with Lyndon B. Johnson, who became president in November 1963.34

Project Apollo, backed by sufficient funding, was the tangible
result of an early national commitment in response to a perceived
threat to the United States by the Soviet Union. NASA leaders
recognized that while the size of the task was enormous, it was
still technologically and financially within their grasp, but
they had to move forward quickly. Accordingly, the space agency's
annual budget increased from $500 million in 1960 to a high point
of $5.2 billion in 1965.35 The NASA funding
level represented 5.3 percent of the federal budget in 1965. A
comparable percentage of the $1.23 trillion Federal budget in
1992 would have equaled more than $65 billion for NASA, whereas
the agency's actual budget then stood at less than $15 billion.

Out of the budgets appropriated for NASA each year approximately
50 percent went directly for human spaceflight, and the vast majority
of that went directly toward Apollo. Between 1959 and 1973 NASA
spent $23.6 billion on human spaceflight, exclusive of infrastructure
and support, of which nearly $20 billion was for Apollo.36
In addition, Webb sought to expand the definition of Project Apollo
beyond just the mission of landing humans on the Moon. As a result
even those projects not officially funded under the Apollo line
item could be justified as supporting the mission, such as the
Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, and Surveyor satellite probes.

For seven years after Kennedy's Apollo decision, through October
1968, James Webb politicked, coaxed, cajoled, and maneuvered for
NASA in Washington. A longtime Washington insider- -the former
director of the Bureau of the Budget and Undersecretary of State
during the Truman Administration--he was a master at bureaucratic
politics, understanding that it was essentially a system of mutual
give and take. For instance, while the native North Carolinian
may also have genuinely believed in the Johnson Administration's
Civil Rights bill that went before Congress in 1964, as a personal
favor to the President he lobbied for its passage on Capitol Hill.
This secured for him Johnson's gratitude, which he then use to
secure the administration's backing of NASA's initiatives. In
addition, Webb wielded the money appropriated for Apollo to build
up a constituency for NASA that was both powerful and vocal. This
type of gritty pragmatism also characterized Webb's dealings with
other government officials and members of Congress throughout
his tenure as administrator. When give and take did not work,
as was the case on occasion with some members of Congress, Webb
used the presidential directive as a hammer to get his way. Usually
this proved successful. After Kennedy's assassination in 1963,
moreover, he sometimes appealed for continued political support
for Apollo because it represented a fitting tribute to the fallen
leader. In the end, through a variety of methods Administrator
Webb built a seamless web of political liaisons that brought continued
support for and resources to accomplish the Apollo Moon landing
on the schedule Kennedy had announced.37

Funding was not the only critical component for Project Apollo.
To realize the goal of Apollo under the strict time constraints
mandated by the president, personnel had to be mobilized. This
took two forms. First, by 1966 the agency's civil service rolls
had grown to 36,000 people from the 10,000 employed at NASA in
1960. Additionally, NASA's leaders made an early decision that
they would have to rely upon outside researchers and technicians
to complete Apollo, and contractor employees working on the program
increased by a factor of 10, from 36,500 in 1960 to 376,700 in
1965. Private industry, research institutions, and universities,
therefore, provided the majority of personnel working on Apollo.38

To incorporate the great amount of work undertaken for the project
into the formal bureaucracy never seemed a particularly savvy
idea, and as a result during the 1960s somewhere between 80 and
90 percent of NASA's overall budget went for contracts to purchase
goods and services from others. Although the magnitude of the
endeavor had been much smaller than with Apollo, this reliance
on the private sector and universities for the bulk of the effort
originated early in NASA's history under T. Keith Glennan, in
part because of the Eisenhower Administration's mistrust of large
government establishments. Although neither Glennan's successor,
nor Kennedy shared that mistrust, they found that it was both
good politics and the best way of getting Apollo done on the presidentially-approved
schedule. It was also very nearly the only way to harness talent
and institutional resources already in existence in the emerging
aerospace industry and the country's leading research universities.39

In addition to these other resources, NASA moved quickly during
the early 1960s to expand its physical capacity so that it could
accomplish Apollo. In 1960 the space agency consisted of a small
headquarters in Washington, its three inherited NACA research
centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Goddard Space Flight
Center, and the Marshall Space Flight Center. With the advent
of Apollo, these installations grew rapidly. In addition, NASA
added three new facilities specifically to meet the demands of
the lunar landing program. In 1962 it created the Manned Spacecraft
Center (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973), near
Houston, Texas, to design the Apollo spacecraft and the launch
platform for the lunar lander. This center also became the home
of NASA's astronauts and the site of mission control. NASA then
greatly expanded for Apollo the Launch Operations Center at Cape
Canaveral on Florida's eastern seacoast. Renamed the John F. Kennedy
Space Center on 29 November 1963, this installation's massive
and expensive Launch Complex 34 was the site of all Apollo firings.
Additionally, the spaceport's Vehicle Assemble Building was a
huge and expensive 36-story structure where the Saturn/Apollo
rockets were assembled. Finally, to support the development of
the Saturn launch vehicle, in October 1961 NASA created on a deep
south bayou the Mississippi Test Facility, renamed the John C.
Stennis Space Center in 1988. The cost of this expansion was great,
more than 2.2 billion over the decade, with 90 percent of it expended
before 1966.40

The Program Management Concept

The mobilization of resources was not the only challenge facing
those charged with meeting President Kennedy's goal. NASA had
to meld disparate institutional cultures and approaches into an
inclusive organization moving along a single unified path. Each
NASA installation, university, contractor, and research facility
had differing perspectives on how to go about the task of accomplishing
Apollo.41 To bring a semblance of order
to the program, NASA expanded the "program management"
concept borrowed by T. Keith Glennan in the late 1950s from the
military/industrial complex, bringing in military managers to
oversee Apollo. The central figure in this process was U.S. Air
Force Major General Samuel C. Phillips, the architect of the Minuteman
ICBM program before coming to NASA in 1962. Answering directly
to the Office of Manned Space Flight at NASA headquarters, which
in turn reported to the NASA administrator, Phillips created an
omnipotent program office with centralized authority over design,
engineering, procurement, testing, construction, manufacturing,
spare parts, logistics, training, and operations.42

One of the fundamental tenets of the program management concept
was that three critical factors--cost, schedule, and reliability--were
interrelated and had to be managed as a group. Many also recognized
these factors' constancy; if program managers held cost to a specific
level, then one of the other two factors, or both of them to a
somewhat lesser degree, would be adversely affected. This held
true for the Apollo program. The schedule, dictated by the president,
was firm. Since humans were involved in the flights, and since
the president had directed that the lunar landing be conducted
safely, the program managers placed a heavy emphasis on reliability.
Accordingly, Apollo used redundant systems extensively so that
failures would be both predictable and minor in result. The significance
of both of these factors forced the third factor, cost, much higher
than might have been the case with a more leisurely lunar program
such as had been conceptualized in the latter 1950s. As it was,
this was the price paid for success under the Kennedy mandate
and program managers made conscious decisions based on a knowledge
of these factors.43

The program management concept was recognized as a critical component
of Project Apollo's success in November 1968, when Science
magazine, the publication of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, observed:

In terms of numbers of dollars or of men, NASA has not
been our largest national undertaking, but in terms of complexity,
rate of growth, and technological sophistication it has been unique.
. . . It may turn out that [the space program's] most valuable
spin-off of all will be human rather than technological: better
knowledge of how to plan, coordinate, and monitor the multitudinous
and varied activities of the organizations required to accomplish
great social undertakings.44

Understanding the management of complex structures for the successful
completion of a multifarious task was an important outgrowth of
the Apollo effort.

This management concept under Phillips orchestrated more than
500 contractors working on both large and small aspects of Apollo.
For example, the prime contracts awarded to industry for the principal
components of just the Saturn V included the Boeing Company for
the S-IC, first stage; North American Aviation--S-II, second stage;
the Douglas Aircraft Corporation--S-IVB, third stage; the Rocketdyne
Division of North American Aviation--J-2 and F-1 engines; and
International Business Machines (IBM)--Saturn instruments. These
prime contractors, with more than 250 subcontractors, provided
millions of parts and components for use in the Saturn launch
vehicle, all meeting exacting specifications for performance and
reliability. The total cost expended on development of the Saturn
launch vehicle was massive, amounting to $9.3 billion. So huge
was the overall Apollo endeavor that NASA's procurement actions
rose from roughly 44,000 in 1960 to almost 300,000 by 1965.45

Getting all of the personnel elements to work together challenged
the program managers, regardless of whether or not they were civil
service, industry, or university personnel. There were various
communities within NASA that differed over priorities and competed
for resources. The two most identifiable groups were the engineers
and the scientists. As ideal types, engineers usually worked in
teams to build hardware that could carry out the missions necessary
to a successful Moon landing by the end of the decade. Their primary
goal involved building vehicles that would function reliably within
the fiscal resources allocated to Apollo. Again as ideal types,
space scientists engaged in pure research and were more concerned
with designing experiments that would expand scientific knowledge
about the Moon. They also tended to be individualists, unaccustomed
to regimentation and unwilling to concede gladly the direction
of projects to outside entities. The two groups contended with
each other over a great variety of issues associated with Apollo.
For instance, the scientists disliked having to configure payloads
so that they could meet time, money, or launch vehicle constraints.
The engineers, likewise, resented changes to scientific packages
added after project definition because these threw their hardware
efforts out of kilter. Both had valid complaints and had to maintain
an uneasy cooperation to accomplish Project Apollo.

The scientific and engineering communities within NASA, additionally,
were not monolithic, and differences among them thrived. Add to
these groups representatives from industry, universities, and
research facilities, and competition on all levels to further
their own scientific and technical areas was the result. The NASA
leadership generally viewed this pluralism as a positive force
within the space program, for it ensured that all sides aired
their views and emphasized the honing of positions to a fine edge.
Competition, most people concluded, made for a more precise and
viable space exploration effort. There were winners and losers
in this strife, however, and sometimes ill-will was harbored for
years. Moreover, if the conflict became too great and spilled
into areas where it was misunderstood, it could be devastating
to the conduct of the lunar program. The head of the Apollo program
worked hard to keep these factors balanced and to promote order
so that NASA could accomplish the presidential directive.46

Another important management issue arose from the agency's inherited
culture of in-house research. Because of the magnitude of Project
Apollo, and its time schedule, most of the nitty-gritty work had
to be done outside NASA by means of contracts. As a result, with
a few important exceptions, NASA scientists and engineers did
not build flight hardware, or even operate missions. Rather, they
planned the program, prepared guidelines for execution, competed
contracts, and oversaw work accomplished elsewhere. This grated
on those NASA personnel oriented toward research, and prompted
disagreements over how to carry out the lunar landing goal. Of
course, they had reason for complaint beyond the simplistic argument
of wanting to be "dirty-handed" engineers; they had
to have enough in-house expertise to ensure program accomplishment.
If scientists or engineers did not have a professional competence
on a par with the individuals actually doing the work, how could
they oversee contractors actually creating the hardware and performing
the experiments necessary to meet the rigors of the mission?47

One anecdote illustrates this point. The Saturn second stage was
built by North American Aviation at its plant at Seal Beach, California,
shipped to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama,
and there tested to ensure that it met contract specifications.
Problems developed on this piece of the Saturn effort and Wernher
von Braun began intensive investigations. Essentially his engineers
completely disassembled and examined every part of every stage
delivered by North American to ensure no defects. This was an
enormously expensive and time-consuming process, grinding the
stage's production schedule almost to a standstill and jeopardizing
the Presidential timetable.

When this happened Webb told von Braun to desist, adding that
"We've got to trust American industry." The issue came
to a showdown at a meeting where the Marshall rocket team was
asked to explain its extreme measures. While doing so, one of
the engineers produced a rag and told Webb that "this is
what we find in this stuff." The contractors, the Marshall
engineers believed, required extensive oversight to ensure they
produced the highest quality work. A compromise emerged that was
called the 10 percent rule: 10 percent of all funding for NASA
was to be spent to ensure in- house expertise and in the process
check contractor reliability.48

How do we go to the Moon?

One of the critical early management decisions made by NASA was
the method of going to the Moon. No controversy in Project Apollo
more significantly caught up the tenor of competing constituencies
in NASA than this one. There were three basic approaches that
were advanced to accomplish the lunar mission:

1. Direct Ascent called for the construction of
a huge booster that launched a spacecraft, sent it on a course
directly to the Moon, landed a large vehicle, and sent some part
of it back to Earth. The Nova booster project, which was to have
been capable of generating up to 40 million pounds of thrust,
would have been able to accomplish this feat. Even if other factors
had not impaired the possibility of direct ascent, the huge cost
and technological sophistication of the Nova rocket quickly ruled
out the option and resulted in cancellation of the project early
in the 1960s despite the conceptual simplicity of the direct ascent
method. The method had few advocates when serious planning for
Apollo began.

2. Earth-Orbit Rendezvous was the logical first
alternative to the direct ascent approach. It called for the launching
of various modules required for the Moon trip into an orbit above
the Earth, where they would rendezvous, be assembled into a single
system, refueled, and sent to the Moon. This could be accomplished
using the Saturn launch vehicle already under development by NASA
and capable of generating 7.5 million pounds of thrust. A logical
component of this approach was also the establishment of a space
station in Earth orbit to serve as the lunar mission's rendezvous,
assembly, and refueling point. In part because of this prospect,
a space station emerged as part of the long-term planning of NASA
as a jumping-off place for the exploration of space. This method
of reaching the Moon, however, was also fraught with challenges,
notably finding methods of maneuvering and rendezvousing in space,
assembling components in a weightless environment, and safely
refueling spacecraft.

3. Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous proposed sending the entire
lunar spacecraft up in one launch. It would head to the Moon,
enter into orbit, and dispatch a small lander to the lunar surface.
It was the simplest of the three methods, both in terms of development
and operational costs, but it was risky. Since rendezvous was
taking place in lunar, instead of Earth, orbit there was no room
for error or the crew could not get home. Moreover, some of the
trickiest course corrections and maneuvers had to be done after
the spacecraft had been committed to a circumlunar flight. The
Earth-orbit rendezvous approach kept all the options for the mission
open longer than the lunar-orbit rendezvous mode.49

Inside NASA, advocates of the various approaches contended over
the method of flying to the Moon while the all-important clock
that Kennedy had started continued to tick. It was critical that
a decision not be delayed, because the mode of flight in part
dictated the spacecraft developed. While NASA engineers could
proceed with building a launch vehicle, the Saturn, and define
the basic components of the spacecraft--a habitable crew compartment,
a baggage car of some type, and a jettisonable service module
containing propulsion and other expendable systems--they could
not proceed much beyond rudimentary conceptions without a mode
decision. The NASA Rendezvous Panel at Langley Research Center,
headed by John C. Houbolt, pressed hard for the lunar-orbit rendezvous
as the most expeditious means of accomplishing the mission. Using
sophisticated technical and economic arguments, over a period
of months in 1961 and 1962 Houbolt's group advocated and persuaded
the rest of NASA's leadership that lunar-orbit rendezvous was
not the risky proposition that it had earlier seemed.50

The last to give in was Wernher von Braun and his associates at
the Marshall Space Flight Center. This group favored the Earth-
orbit rendezvous because the direct ascent approach was technologically
unfeasible before the end of the 1960s, because it provided a
logical rationale for a space station, and because it ensured
an extension of the Marshall workload (something that was always
important to center directors competing inside the agency for
personnel and other resources). At an all-day meeting on 7 June
1962 at Marshall, NASA leaders met to hash out these differences,
with the debate getting heated at times. After more than six hours
of discussion von Braun finally gave in to the lunar-orbit rendezvous
mode, saying that its advocates had demonstrated adequately its
feasibility and that any further contention would jeopardize the
president's timetable.51

With internal dissention quieted, NASA moved to announce the Moon
landing mode to the public in the summer of 1962. As it prepared
to do so, however, Kennedy's Science Adviser, Jerome B. Wiesner,
raised objections because of the inherent risk it brought to the
crew. As a result of this opposition, Webb back-pedaled and stated
that the decision was tentative and that NASA would sponsor further
studies. The issue reached a climax at the Marshall Space Flight
Center in September 1962 when President Kennedy, Wiesner, Webb,
and several other Washington figures visited von Braun. As the
entourage viewed a mock- up of a Saturn V first stage booster
during a photo opportunity for the media, Kennedy nonchalantly
mentioned to von Braun, "I understand you and Jerry disagree
about the right way to go to the moon." Von Braun acknowledged
this disagreement, but when Wiesner began to explain his concern
Webb, who had been quiet until this point, began to argue with
him "for being on the wrong side of the issue." While
the mode decision had been an uninteresting technical issue before,
it then became a political concern hashed over in the press for
days thereafter. The science advisor to British Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan, who had accompanied Wiesner on the trip, later
asked Kennedy on Air Force One how the debate would turn out.
The president told him that Wiesner would lose, "Webb's got
all the money, and Jerry's only got me."52
Kennedy was right, Webb lined up political support in Washington
for the lunar-orbit rendezvous mode and announced it as a final
decision on 7 November 1962.53 This set
the stage for the operational aspects of Apollo.

Prelude to Apollo: Mercury

At the time of the announcement of Project Apollo by President
Kennedy in May 1961 NASA was still consumed with the task of placing
an American in orbit through Project Mercury. Stubborn problems
arose, however, at seemingly every turn. The first space flight
of an astronaut, made by Alan B. Shepard, had been postponed for
weeks so NASA engineers could resolve numerous details and only
took place on 5 May 1961, less than three weeks before the Apollo
announcement. The second flight, a suborbital mission like Shepard's,
launched on 21 July 1961, also had problems. The hatch blew off
prematurely from the Mercury capsule, Liberty Bell 7, and
it sank into the Atlantic Ocean before it could be recovered.
In the process the astronaut, "Gus" Grissom, nearly
drowned before being hoisted to safety in a helicopter. These
suborbital flights, however, proved valuable for NASA technicians
who found ways to solve or work around literally thousands of
obstacles to successful space flight.54

As these issues were being resolved, NASA engineers began final
preparations for the orbital aspects of Project Mercury. In this
phase NASA planned to use a Mercury capsule capable of supporting
a human in space for not just minutes, but eventually for as much
as three days. As a launch vehicle for this Mercury capsule, NASA
used the more powerful Atlas instead of the Redstone. But this
decision was not without controversy. There were technical difficulties
to be overcome in mating it to the Mercury capsule to be sure,
but the biggest complication was a debate among NASA engineers
over its propriety for human spaceflight.55

When first conceived in the 1950s many believed Atlas was a high-risk
proposition because to reduce its weight Convair Corp. engineers
under the direction of Karel J. Bossart, a pre-World War II immigrant
from Belgium, designed the booster with a very thin, internally
pressurized fuselage instead of massive struts and a thick metal
skin. The "steel balloon," as it was sometimes called,
employed engineering techniques that ran counter to a conservative
engineering approach used by Wernher von Braun for the V-2 and
the Redstone at Huntsville, Alabama.56 Von
Braun, according to Bossart, needlessly designed his boosters
like "bridges," to withstand any possible shock. For
his part, von Braun thought the Atlas too flimsy to hold up during
launch. He considered Bossart's approach much too dangerous for
human spaceflight, remarking that the astronaut using the "contraption,"
as he called the Atlas booster, "should be getting a medal
just for sitting on top of it before he takes off!"57
The reservations began to melt away, however, when Bossart's team
pressurized one of the boosters and dared one of von Braun's engineers
to knock a hole in it with a sledge hammer. The blow left the
booster unharmed, but the recoil from the hammer nearly clubbed
the engineer.58

Most of the differences had been resolved by the first successful
orbital flight of an unoccupied Mercury-Atlas combination in September
1961. On 29 November the final test flight took place, this time
with the chimpanzee Enos occupying the capsule for a two-orbit
ride before being successfully recovered in an ocean landing.
Not until 20 February 1962, however, could NASA get ready for
an orbital flight with an astronaut. On that date John Glenn became
the first American to circle the Earth, making three orbits in
his Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft. The flight was not
without problems, however; Glenn flew parts of the last two orbits
manually because of an autopilot failure and left his normally
jettisoned retrorocket pack attached to his capsule during reentry
because of a loose heat shield.

Glenn's flight provided a healthy increase in national pride,
making up for at least some of the earlier Soviet successes. The
public, more than celebrating the technological success, embraced
Glenn as a personification of heroism and dignity. Hundreds of
requests for personal appearances by Glenn poured into NASA headquarters,
and NASA learned much about the power of the astronauts to sway
public opinion. The NASA leadership made Glenn available to speak
at some events, but more often substituted other astronauts and
declined many other invitations. Among other engagements, Glenn
did address a joint session of Congress and participated in several
ticker-tape parades around the country. NASA discovered in the
process of this hoopla a powerful public relations tool that it
has employed ever since.59

Three more successful Mercury flights took place during 1962 and
1963. Scott Carpenter made three orbits on 20 May 1962, and on
3 October 1962 Walter Schirra flew six orbits. The capstone of
Project Mercury was the 15-16 May 1963 flight of Gordon Cooper,
who circled the Earth 22 times in 34 hours. The program had succeeded
in accomplishing its purpose: to successfully orbit a human in
space, explore aspects of tracking and control, and to learn about
microgravity and other biomedical issues associated with spaceflight.60

Bridging the Technological Gap: From Gemini to Apollo

Even as the Mercury program was underway and work took place developing
Apollo hardware, NASA program managers perceived a huge gap in
the capability for human spaceflight between that acquired with
Mercury and what would be required for a Lunar landing. They closed
most of the gap by experimenting and training on the ground, but
some issues required experience in space. Three major areas immediately
arose where this was the case. The first was the ability in space
to locate, maneuver toward, and rendezvous and dock with another
spacecraft. The second was closely related, the ability of astronauts
to work outside a spacecraft. The third involved the collection
of more sophisticated physiological data about the human response
to extended spaceflight.61

To gain experience in these areas before Apollo could be readied
for flight, NASA devised Project Gemini. Hatched in the fall of
1961 by engineers at Robert Gilruth's Space Task Group in cooperation
with McDonnell Aircraft Corp. technicians, builders of the Mercury
spacecraft, Gemini started as a larger Mercury Mark II capsule
but soon became a totally different proposition. It could accommodate
two astronauts for extended flights of more than two weeks. It
pioneered the use of fuel cells instead of batteries to power
the ship, and incorporated a series of modifications to hardware.
Its designers also toyed with the possibility of using a paraglider
being developed at Langley Research Center for "dry"
landings instead of a "splashdown" in water and recovery
by the Navy. The whole system was to be powered by the newly developed
Titan II launch vehicle, another ballistic missile developed
for the Air Force. A central reason for this program was to perfect
techniques for rendezvous and docking, so NASA appropriated from
the military some Agena rocket upper stages and fitted them with
docking adapters.

Problems with the Gemini program abounded from the start. The
Titan II had longitudinal oscillations, called the "pogo"
effect because it resembled the behavior of a child on a pogo
stick. Overcoming this problem required engineering imagination
and long hours of overtime to stabilize fuel flow and maintain
vehicle control. The fuel cells leaked and had to be redesigned,
and the Agena reconfiguration also suffered costly delays. NASA
engineers never did get the paraglider to work properly and eventually
dropped it from the program in favor of a parachute system the
one used for Mercury. All of these difficulties shot an estimated
$350 million program to over $1 billion. The overruns were successfully
justified by the space agency, however, as necessities to meet
the Apollo landing commitment.62

By the end of 1963 most of the difficulties with Gemini had been
resolved, albeit at great expense, and the program was ready for
flight. Following two unoccupied orbital test flights, the first
operational mission took place on 23 March 1965. Mercury astronaut
Grissom commanded the mission, with John W. Young, a Naval aviator
chosen as an astronaut in 1962, accompanying him. The next mission,
flown in June 1965 stayed aloft for four days and astronaut Edward
H. White II performed the first extra-vehicular activity (EVA)
or spacewalk.63 Eight more missions followed
through November 1966. Despite problems great and small encountered
on virtually all of them, the program achieved its goals. Additionally,
as a technological learning program Gemini had been a success,
with 52 different experiments performed on the ten missions. The
bank of data acquired from Gemini helped to bridge the gap between
Mercury and what would be required to complete Apollo within the
time constraints directed by the president.64

Satellite Support of Apollo

In addition to the necessity of acquiring the skills necessary
to maneuver in space prior to executing the Apollo mandate, NASA
had to learn much more about the Moon itself to ensure that its
astronauts would survive. They needed to know the composition
and geography of Moon, and the nature of the lunar surface. Was
it solid enough to support a lander, was it composed of dust that
would swallow up the spacecraft? Would communications systems
work on the Moon? Would other factors--geology, geography, radiation,
etc.--affect the astronauts? To answer these questions three distinct
satellite research programs emerged to study the Moon. The first
of these was Project Ranger, which had actually been started in
the 1950s, in response to Soviet lunar exploration, but had been
a notable failure until the mid-1960s when three probes photographed
the lunar surface before crashing into it.65

The second project was the Lunar Orbiter, an effort approved in
1960 to place probes in orbit around the Moon. This project, originally
not intended to support Apollo, was reconfigured in 1962 and 1963
to further the Kennedy mandate more specifically by mapping the
surface. In addition to a powerful camera that could send photographs
to Earth tracking stations, it carried three scientific experiments--selnodesy
(the lunar equivalent of geodesy), meteoroid detection, and radiation
measurement. While the returns from these instruments interested
scientists in and of themselves, they were critical to Apollo.
NASA launched five Lunar Orbiter satellites between 10 August
1966 and 1 August 1967, all successfully achieving their objectives.
At the completion of the third mission, moreover, the Apollo planners
announced that they had sufficient data to press on with an astronaut
landing, and were able to use the last two missions for other
activities.66

Finally, in 1961 NASA created Project Surveyor to soft-land a
satellite on the Moon. A small craft with tripod landing legs,
it could take post-landing photographs and perform a variety of
other measurements. Surveyor 1 landed on the Moon on 2
June 1966 and transmitted more than 10,000 high-quality photographs
of the surface. Although the second mission crash landed, the
next flight provided photographs, measurements of the composition
and surface-bearing strength of the lunar crust, and readings
on the thermal and radar reflectivity of the soil. Although Surveyor
4 failed, by the time of the program's completion in 1968
the remaining three missions had yielded significant scientific
data both for Apollo and for the broader lunar science community.67

Building Saturn

NASA inherited the effort to develop the Saturn family of boosters
used to launch Apollo to the Moon in 1960 when it acquired the
Army Ballistic Missile Agency under Wernher von Braun.68
By that time von Braun's engineers were hard at work on the first
generation Saturn launch vehicle, a cluster of eight Redstone
boosters around a Jupiter fuel tank. Fueled by a combination of
liquid oxygen (LOX) and RP-1 (a version of kerosene), the Saturn
I could generate a thrust of 205,000 pounds. This group also
worked on a second stage, known in its own right as the Centaur,
that used a revolutionary fuel mixture of LOX and liquid hydrogen
that could generate a greater ratio of thrust to weight. The fuel
choice made this second stage a difficult development effort,
because the mixture was highly volatile and could not be readily
handled. But the stage could produce an additional 90,000 pounds
of thrust. The Saturn I was solely a research and development
vehicle that would lead toward the accomplishment of Apollo, making
ten flights between October 1961 and July 1965. The first four
flights tested the first stage, but beginning with the fifth launch
the second stage was active and these missions were used to place
scientific payloads and Apollo test capsules into orbit.69

The next step in Saturn development came with the maturation of
the Saturn IB, an upgraded version of earlier vehicle.
With more powerful engines generating 1.6 million pounds of thrust
from the first stage, the two-stage combination could place 62,000-
pound payloads into Earth orbit. The first flight on 26 February
1966 tested the capability of the booster and the Apollo capsule
in a suborbital flight. Two more flights followed in quick succession.
Then there was a hiatus of more than a year before the 22 January
1968 launch of a Saturn IB with both an Apollo capsule
and a lunar landing module aboard for orbital testing. The only
astronaut-occupied flight of the Saturn IB took place between
11 and 22 October 1968 when Walter Schirra, Donn F. Eisele, and
R. Walter Cunningham, made 163 orbits testing Apollo equipment.70

The largest launch vehicle of this family, the Saturn V,
represented the culmination of those earlier booster development
and test programs. Standing 363 feet tall, with three stages,
this was the vehicle that could take astronauts to the Moon and
return them safely to Earth. The first stage generated 7.5 million
pounds of thrust from five massive engines developed for the system.
These engines, known as the F-1, were some of the most significant
engineering accomplishments of the program, requiring the development
of new alloys and different construction techniques to withstand
the extreme heat and shock of firing. The thunderous sound of
the first static test of this stage, taking place at Huntsville,
Alabama, on 16 April 1965, brought home to many that the Kennedy
goal was within technological grasp. For others, it signaled the
magic of technological effort; one engineer even characterized
rocket engine technology as a "black art" without rational
principles. The second stage presented enormous challenges to
NASA engineers and very nearly caused the lunar landing goal to
be missed. Consisting of five engines burning LOX and liquid hydrogen,
this stage could deliver 1 million pounds of thrust. It was always
behind schedule, and required constant attention and additional
funding to ensure completion by the deadline for a lunar landing.
Both the first and third stages of this Saturn vehicle development
program moved forward relatively smoothly. (The third stage was
an enlarged and improved version of the IB, and had few developmental
complications.)71

Despite all of this, the biggest problem with Saturn V
lay not with the hardware, but with the clash of philosophies
toward development and test. The von Braun "Rocket Team"
had made important technological contributions and enjoyed popular
acclaim as a result of conservative engineering practices that
took minutely incremental approaches toward test and verification.
They tested each component of each system individually and then
assembled them for a long series of ground tests. Then they would
launch each stage individually before assembling the whole system
for a long series of flight tests. While this practice ensured
thoroughness, it was both costly and time-consuming, and NASA
had neither commodity to expend. George E. Mueller, the head of
NASA's Office of Manned Space Flight, disagreed with this approach.
Drawing on his experience with the Air Force and aerospace industry,
and shadowed by the twin bugaboos of schedule and cost, Mueller
advocated what he called the "all-up" concept in which
the entire Apollo-Saturn system was tested together in flight
without the laborious preliminaries.72

A calculated gamble, the first Saturn V test launch took
place on 9 November 1967 with the entire Apollo-Saturn combination.
A second test followed on 4 April 1968, and even though it was
only partially successful because the second stage shut off prematurely
and the third stage--needed to start the Apollo payload into lunar
trajectory--failed, Mueller declared that the test program had
been completed and that the next launch would have astronauts
aboard. The gamble paid off. In 17 test and 15 piloted launches,
the Saturn booster family scored a 100 percent launch reliability
rate.73

The Apollo Spacecraft

Almost with the announcement of the lunar landing commitment in
1961 NASA technicians began a crash program to develop a reasonable
configuration for the trip to lunar orbit and back. What they
came up with was a three-person command module capable of sustaining
human life for two weeks or more in either Earth orbit or in a
lunar trajectory; a service module holding oxygen, fuel, maneuvering
rockets, fuel cells, and other expendable and life support equipment
that could be jettisoned upon reentry to Earth; a retrorocket
package attached to the service module for slowing to prepare
for reentry; and finally a launch escape system that was discarded
upon achieving orbit. The tear-drop shaped command module had
two hatches, one on the side for entry and exit of the crew at
the beginning and end of the flight and one in the nose with a
docking collar for use in moving to and from the lunar landing
vehicle.74

Work on the Apollo spacecraft stretched from 28 November 1961,
when the prime contract for its development was let to North American
Aviation, to 22 October 1968 when the last test flight took place.
In between there were various efforts to design, build, and test
the spacecraft both on the ground and in suborbital and orbital
flights. For instance, on 13 May 1964 NASA tested a boilerplate
model of the Apollo capsule atop a stubby Little Joe II
military booster, and another Apollo capsule actually achieved
orbit on 18 September 1964 when it was launched atop a Saturn
I. By the end of 1966 NASA leaders declared the Apollo command
module ready for human occupancy. The final flight checkout of
the spacecraft prior to the lunar flight took place on 11-22 October
1968 with three astronauts.75

As these development activities were taking place, tragedy struck
the Apollo program. On 27 January 1967, Apollo-Saturn (AS) 204,
scheduled to be the first spaceflight with astronauts aboard the
capsule, was on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, Florida,
moving through simulation tests. The three astronauts to fly on
this mission--"Gus" Grissom, Edward White, and Roger
B. Chaffee--were aboard running through a mock launch sequence.
At 6:31 p.m., after several hours of work, a fire broke out in
the spacecraft and the pure oxygen atmosphere intended for the
flight helped it burn with intensity. In a flash, flames engulfed
the capsule and the astronauts died of asphyxiation. It took the
ground crew five minutes to open the hatch. When they did so they
found three bodies. Although three other astronauts had been killed
before this time--all in plane crashes--these were the first deaths
directly attributable to the U.S. space program.76

Shock gripped NASA and the nation during the days that followed.
James Webb, NASA Administrator, told the media at the time, "We've
always known that something like this was going to happen soon
or later. . . . who would have thought that the first tragedy
would be on the ground?"77 As the nation
mourned, Webb went to President Lyndon Johnson and asked that
NASA be allowed to handle the accident investigation and direct
the recovery from the accident. He promised to be truthful in
assessing blame and pledged to assign it to himself and NASA management
as appropriate. The day after the fire NASA appointed an eight
member investigation board, chaired by longtime NASA official
and director of the Langley Research Center, Floyd L. Thompson.
It set out to discover the details of the tragedy: what happened,
why it happened, could it happen again, what was at fault, and
how could NASA recover? The members of the board learned that
the fire had been caused by a short circuit in the electrical
system that ignited combustible materials in the spacecraft fed
by the oxygen atmosphere. They also found that it could have been
prevented and called for several modifications to the spacecraft,
including a move to a less oxygen-rich environment. Changes to
the capsule followed quickly, and within a little more than a
year it was ready for flight.78

Webb reported these findings to various Congressional committees
and took a personal grilling at every meeting. His answers were
sometimes evasive and always defensive. The New York Times,
which was usually critical of Webb, had a field day with this
situation and said that NASA stood for "Never a Straight
Answer." While the ordeal was personally taxing, whether
by happenstance or design Webb deflected much of the backlash
over the fire from both NASA as an agency and from the Johnson
administration. While he was personally tarred with the disaster,
the space agency's image and popular support was largely undamaged.
Webb himself never recovered from the stigma of the fire, and
when he left NASA in October 1968, even as Apollo was nearing
a successful completion, few mourned his departure.79

The AS 204 fire also troubled Webb ideologically during the months
that followed. He had been a high priest of technocracy ever since
coming to NASA in 1961, arguing for the authority of experts,
well-organized and led, and with sufficient resources to resolve
the "many great economic, social, and political problems"
that pressed the nation. He wrote in his book, Space Age Management,
as late as 1969 that "Our Society has reached a point where
its progress and even its survival increasingly depend upon our
ability to organize the complex and to do the unusual."80
He believed he had achieved that model organization for complex
accomplishments at NASA. Yet that model structure of exemplary
management had failed to anticipate and resolve the shortcomings
in the Apollo capsule design and had not taken what seemed in
retrospect to be normal precautions to ensure the safety of the
crew. The system had broken down. As a result Webb became less
trustful of other officials at NASA and gathered more and more
decisionmaking authority to himself. This wore on him during the
rest of his time as NASA Administrator, and in reality the failure
of the technological model for solving problems was an important
forecaster of a trend that would be increasingly present in American
culture thereafter as technology was blamed for a good many of
society's ills. That problem would be particularly present as
NASA tried to win political approval of later NASA projects.81

The Lunar Module

If the Saturn launch vehicle and the Apollo spacecraft were difficult
technological challenges, the third part of the hardware for the
Moon landing, the Lunar Module (LM), represented the most serious
problem. Begun a year later than it should have been, the LM was
consistently behind schedule and over budget. Much of the problem
turned on the demands of devising two separate spacecraft components--one
for descent to the Moon and one for ascent back to the command
module--that only maneuvered outside an atmosphere. Both engines
had to work perfectly or the very real possibility existed that
the astronauts would not return home. Guidance, maneuverability,
and spacecraft control also caused no end of headaches. The landing
structure likewise presented problems; it had to be light and
sturdy and shock resistent. An ungainly vehicle emerged which
two astronauts could fly while standing. In November 1962 Grumman
Aerospace Corp. signed a contract with NASA to produce the LM,
and work on it began in earnest. With difficulty the LM was orbited
on a Saturn V test launch in January 1968 and judged ready
for operation.82

Trips to the Moon

After a piloted orbital mission to test the Apollo equipment on
October 1968, on 21 December 1968 Apollo 8 took off atop
a Saturn V booster from the Kennedy Space Center with three
astronauts aboard--Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William
A. Anders--for a historic mission to orbit the Moon.83
At first it was planned as a mission to test Apollo hardware in
the relatively safe confines of low Earth orbit, but senior engineer
George M. Low of the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston, Texas,
and Samuel C. Phillips, Apollo Program Manager at NASA headquarters,
pressed for approval to make it a circumlunar flight. The advantages
of this could be important, both in technical and scientific knowledge
gained as well as in a public demonstration of what the U.S. could
achieve.84 So far Apollo had been all promise;
now the delivery was about to begin. In the summer of 1968 Low
broached the idea to Phillips, who then carried it to the administrator,
and in November the agency reconfigured the mission for a lunar
trip. After Apollo 8 made one and a half Earth orbits its
third stage began a burn to put the spacecraft on a lunar trajectory.
As it traveled outward the crew focused a portable television
camera on Earth and for the first time humanity saw its home from
afar, a tiny, lovely, and fragile "blue marble" hanging
in the blackness of space. When it arrived at the Moon on Christmas
Eve this image of Earth was even more strongly reinforced when
the crew sent images of the planet back while reading the first
part of the Bible--"God created the heavens and the Earth,
and the Earth was without form and void"--before sending
Christmas greetings to humanity. The next day they fired the boosters
for a return flight and "spashed down" in the Pacific
Ocean on 27 December. It was an enormously significant accomplishment
coming at a time when American society was in crisis over Vietnam,
race relations, urban problems, and a host of other difficulties.
And if only for a few moments the nation united as one to focus
on this epochal event. Two more Apollo missions occurred before
the climax of the program, but they did little more than confirm
that the time had come for a lunar landing.85

Then came the big event. Apollo 11 lifted off on 16 July
1969, and after confirming that the hardware was working well
began the three day trip to the Moon. At 4:18 p.m. EST on 20 July
1969 the LM--with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin-
-landed on the lunar surface while Michael Collins orbited overhead
in the Apollo command module. After checkout, Armstrong set foot
on the surface, telling millions who saw and heard him on Earth
that it was "one small step for man--one giant leap for mankind."
(Neil Armstrong later added "a" when referring to "one
small step for a man" to clarify the first sentence
delivered from the Moon's surface.) Aldrin soon followed him out,
and the two plodded around the landing site in the 1/6 lunar gravity,
planted an American flag but omitted claiming the land for the
U.S. as had been routinely done during European exploration of
the Americas, collected soil and rock samples, and set up scientific
experiments. The next day they launched back to the Apollo capsule
orbiting overhead and began the return trip to Earth, splashing
down in the Pacific on 24 July.86

These flights rekindled the excitement felt in the early 1960s
with John Glenn and the Mercury astronauts. Apollo 11,
in particular, met with an ecstatic reaction around the globe,
as everyone shared in the success of the mission. Ticker tape
parades, speaking engagements, public relations events, and a
world tour by the astronauts served to create good will both in
the U.S. and abroad.

Five more landing missions followed at approximately six month
intervals through December 1972, each of them increasing the time
spent on the Moon. Three of the latter Apollo missions used a
lunar rover vehicle to travel in the vicinity of the landing site,
but none of them equaled the excitement of Apollo 11. The
scientific experiments placed on the Moon and the lunar soil samples
returned through Project Apollo have provided grist for scientists'
investigations of the Solar System ever since. The scientific
return was significant, but the Apollo program did not answer
conclusively the age-old questions of lunar origins and evolution.87

In spite of the success of the other missions, only Apollo
13, launched on 11 April 1970, came close to matching earlier
popular interest. But that was only because, 56 hours into the
flight, an oxygen tank in the Apollo service module ruptured and
damaged several of the power, electrical, and life support systems.
People throughout the world watched and waited and hoped as NASA
personnel on the ground and the crew, well in their way to the
Moon and with no way of returning until they went around it, worked
together to find a way safely home. While NASA engineers quickly
determined that air, water, and electricity did not exist in the
Apollo capsule sufficient to sustain the three astronauts until
they could return to Earth, they found that the LM--a self- contained
spacecraft unaffected by the accident--could be used as a "lifeboat"
to provide austere life support for the return trip. It was a
close-run thing, but the crew returned safely on 17 April 1970.
The near disaster served several important purposes for the civil
space program--especially prompting reconsideration of the propriety
of the whole effort while also solidifying in the popular mind
NASA's technological genius.88

A Meaning for Apollo

Project Apollo in general, and the flight of Apollo 11
in particular, should be viewed as a watershed in the nation's
history. It was an endeavor that demonstrated both the technological
and economic virtuosity of the United States and established technologically
preeminence over rival nations--the primary goal of the program
when first envisioned by the Kennedy administration in 1961. It
had been an enormous undertaking, costing $25.4 billion (about
$95 billion in 1990 dollars), with only the building of the Panama
Canal rivaling the Apollo program's size as the largest non-military
technological endeavor ever undertaken by the United States and
only the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb in World War
II being comparable in a wartime setting.

There are several important legacies (or conclusions) about Project
Apollo that need to be remembered. First, and probably most important,
the Apollo program was successful in accomplishing the political
goals for which it had been created. Kennedy had been dealing
with a Cold War crisis in 1961 brought on by several separate
factors--the Soviet orbiting of Yuri Gagarin and the disastrous
Bay of Pigs invasion only two of them--that Apollo was designed
to combat. At the time of the Apollo 11 landing Mission
Control in Houston flashed the words of President Kennedy announcing
the Apollo commitment on its big screen. Those phrases were followed
with these: "TASK ACCOMPLISHED, July 1969." No greater
understatement could probably have been made. Any assessment of
Apollo that does not recognize the accomplishment of landing an
American on the Moon and safely returning before the end of the
1960s is incomplete and innaccurate, for that was the primary
goal of the undertaking.89

Second, Project Apollo was a triumph of management in meeting
enormously difficult systems engineering, technological, and organizational
integration requirements. James E. Webb, the NASA Administrator
at the height of the program between 1961 and 1968, always contended
that Apollo was much more a management exercise than anything
else, and that the technological challenge, while sophisticated
and impressive, was largely within grasp at the time of the 1961
decision.90 More difficult was ensuring
that those technological skills were properly managed and used.

Webb's contention was confirmed in spades by the success of Apollo.
NASA leaders had to acquire and organize unprecedented resources
to accomplish the task at hand. From both a political and technological
perspective, management was critical. For seven years after Kennedy's
Apollo decision, through October 1968, James Webb maneuvered for
NASA in Washington to obtain sufficient resources to meet Apollo
requirements. More to the point, NASA personnel employed the "program
management" concept that centralized authority and emphasized
systems engineering. The systems management of the program was
critical to Apollo's success.91 Understanding
the management of complex structures for the successful completion
of a multifarious task was a critical outgrowth of the Apollo
effort.

Third, Project Apollo forced the people of the world to view the
planet Earth in a new way. Apollo 8 was critical to this
fundamental change, as it treated the world to the first pictures
of the Earth from afar. Writer Archibald MacLeish summed up the
feelings of many people when he wrote at the time of Apollo, that
"To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful
in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as
riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness
in the eternal cold--brothers who know now that they are truly
brothers."92 The modern environmental
movement was galvanized in part by this new perception of the
planet and the need to protect it and the life that it supports.93

Finally, the Apollo program, while an enormous achievement, left
a divided legacy for NASA and the aerospace community. The perceived
"golden age" of Apollo created for the agency an expectation
that the direction of any major space goal from the president
would always bring NASA a broad consensus of support and provide
it with the resources and license to dispense them as it saw fit.
Something most NASA officials did not understand at the time of
the Moon landing in 1969, however, was that Apollo had not been
conducted under normal political circumstances and that the exceptional
circumstances surrounding Apollo would not be repeated.94

The Apollo decision was, therefore, an anomaly in the national
decision-making process. The dilemma of the "golden age"
of Apollo has been difficult to overcome, but moving beyond the
Apollo program to embrace future opportunities has been an important
goal of the agency's leadership in the recent past. Exploration
of the Solar System and the universe remains as enticing a goal
and as important an objective for humanity as it ever has been.
Project Apollo was an important early step in that ongoing process
of exploration.

13. On this invasion see, Peter Wyden,
Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1979); Haynes Bonner Johnson, The Bay of Pigs: The Leaders'
Story of Brigade 2506 (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1964);
Albert C. Persons, Bay of Pigs: A Firsthand Account of the
Mission by a U.S. Pilot in Support of the Cuban Invasion Force
in 1961 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990).

15. T. Keith Glennan, The Birth
of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan, edited by J.D. Hunley
(Washington, DC: NASA SP-4105, 1993), pp. 314-15. This is essentially
the same position as set forth in Logsdon, Decision to Go to
the Moon, pp. 111-12, although McDougall, . . . Heavens
and the Earth, p. 8, also includes a "growing technocratic
mentality" as a reason for the decision.

21. Robert A. Divine, "Lyndon
B. Johnson and the Politics of Space," in Robert A. Divine,
ed., The Johnson Years: Vietnam, the Environment, and Science
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987), pp. 231-33.

27. James E. Webb and Robert S. McNamara
to John F. Kennedy, May 8, 1961, John F. Kennedy Library.

28. There is evidence to suggest that
the 1967 date was hit upon because it was the fiftieth anniversary
of the communist revolution in the Soviet Union and that U.S.
leaders believed the Soviets were planning something spectacular
in space in commemoration of the date. Interview with Robert C.
Seamans, Jr., 23 February 1994, Washington, DC.

29. See original excerpts from "Urgent
National Needs," Speech to a Joint Session of Congress, 25
May 1961, Presidential Files, Kennedy Presidential Library.

32. John Law, "Technology and
Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion,"
pp. 111-34; and Donald MacKenzie, "Missile Accuracy: A Case
Study in the Social Processes of Technological Change," pp.
195-222, both in Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor
J. Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems:
New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987).

33. As an example see the 1963 defense
of Apollo by the vice president. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson
to the President, 13 May 1963, with attached report, John F. Kennedy
Presidential Files, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

78. United States House, Committee
on Science and Astronautics, Subcommittee on NASA Oversight, Investigation
into Apollo 204 accident, Hearings, Ninetieth Congress, first
session (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1967);
United States House, Committee on Science and Astronautics, Apollo
Program Pace and Progress; Staff Study for the Subcommittee on
NASA Oversight, Ninetieth Congress, first session (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1967); United States House, Committee
on Science and Aeronautics, Apollo and Apollo Applications:
Staff Study for the Subcommittee on NASA Oversight of the Committee
on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth
Congress, Second Session (Washington, DC: Government Printing
Office, 1968); Robert C. Seamans, Jr., and Frederick I. Ordway
III, "Lessons of Apollo for Large-Scale Technology,"
in Frederick C. Durant III, ed., Between Sputnik and the Shuttle:
New Perspectives on American Astronautics (San Diego: Univelt,
1981), pp. 241-87.

94. As an example, see the argument
made in George M. Low, Team Leader, to Mr. Richard Fairbanks,
Director, Transition Resources and Development Group, "Report
of the NASA Transition Team," 19 December 1980, NASA Historical
Reference Collection, advocating strong presidential leadership
to make everything right with the U.S. space program.